The Poetry Marathon

Peace

They want peace
They call it peace
As if peace is justice
With a fancy wig
And flashy jewelry

As if calm streets
And pretty murals
Will bring them back

They call it peace
When they mean suppression
When they mean conformity
When they mean complacency

They call it peace
And they want us to call it peace
To protect their economy
To protect their supremacy
To protect themselves

They call it peace
And they’ve got
So many of us calling
It peace

No justice
No peace
No justice
No peace
No justice
No peace

So we don’t call it peace
We don’t call it a riot
We won’t go back to
‘Normal’
This is the uprising
Hop on board
Or step aside

YES, PLEASE (letter to Berthe Morisot)

  The Garden at Bougival (Berthe Morison, 1884)

YES, PLEASE                                    

Dear Berthe,

Many thanks for the invitation. Yes, I’d love to visit you in Bougival.  Not so much because I want to see your house, though I expect it’s splendid! I can’t imagine an artist obsessed with light and the ecstasy of color living anywhere dim and dull.  No, I confess, I want to lounge in your vast gardens –  abundant, dappled blooms – roses, hydrangeas, hollyhocks.  To devour all their tones and shades.  To see the Seine flow slowly and calmly, day by day.

Want to kick off my shoes, like your daughter Julie, and wade in the thick lawn; to spend hours in that lush enclosure.  Want to see where you thrived in the Seine’s river light.  Enough to make the heart sing!

Victorian by birth you may have been, but you weren’t invisibly demure like so many women.  For that I thank you.  Expect me shortly.

 

 

 

Notes:  Berthe Morisot lived and worked in Bougival, France, not far from Paris, at 4 rue de la Princesse where she rented a house and spent every summer between 1881 and 1884, making at least 40 paintings — The Fable (1883), The Quay at Bougival (1883), On the Veranda (1884), Garden at Bougival (1884), Eugène Manet and his daughter in the garden (1883),  Roses trémières (Hollyhocks) (1884),  and more.

Elijah

He was the most gentle of souls —
playing his violin for the kittens at the shelter
so they would not be lonely.

On that night, he was just walking home,
carrying an iced tea for his brother
and, yes, he was singing and dancing
in his own special way.

For this, the police were called.
For this, the police put him in a chokehold.
For this, the paramedics injected him with a sedative.
For this, Elijah was killed.

I was just going home
I’m just different
I’m an introvert
That’s all

Today we are all Elijah.
We are all different.
We are all gentle souls.
In this time, right now,
that is an enormous thing.

Prompt #10: ZZZ oops!

The needle on the record player glides across the 45 as my eyes close to focus on the music.
My mind continues to race with anxiety as it seeks inspiration from the calm tones of Cat Stevens.
While Moonshadow plays I can’t focus.
It is encouraging me to take knap.
While my head encourages me to make another cup of coffee.
The impatient voice in my head feeling as though the two minutes and forty-nine seconds feel like two hours.
How does one write a poem about a song that there head just cannot seem to focus on?
Oh wait… I just did.

#12 Northbound

In Los Angeles
I almost steered into a tree
my overloaded car,
overloaded with me.

I’d never felt so unlike myself,
a self willing to kill myself.
the day I left my mind
I left my future
behind

toward anything I’m capable of
desert,
drought
drowning,
flood. Northbound
and home, away
from the machine,
the killing machine,
acting alone,
unable to admit
the killing machine was me.

2020 – 12

There was a boy
A very strange
Imaginative boy
Who carried worlds
Inside his mind
Of places that he
Traveled and of
Places he did not

He crafted stories
Of people in his path
And oh how often
Did he make us laugh
The way he put
The words together

I missed him so
When he was far
Now I do even more
For he is gone
Before his time
The memories of him
Sad as it is
Are all that’s left behind

Prompt 12 (Poetry Marathon)

Chosen first line of the book — >  “The pain hit with sudden furry”

 

“Untitled”

 

As the pain hit with sudden furry,

I stumble back acting in a hurry,

Even I’m not chasing any.

I am just there, a bit weary.

 

The bad memories keeps knocking back.

I’m a fool to even bother by it.

I was on feet trying to open the door,

Until I remember your face once more.

 

Ring the bell to hit this head.

I am long gone and dead,

I remember, that’s what you said.

So be gone, just be dead.

 

(C) M. E. Flores

 

 

For Love

Losing it all
Never knowing what they had
It wouldn’t be the first time
Something awful had been done
In the name of love
Finally we see what two people do
When trapped with no way out
A lifetime had gone by
Without really knowing
The stranger in the bed
Broken hearts, broken promises
Litter the floor like shards of glass
Causing pain to those who enter
Without grasping the circumstance

Rules of Wealth

If you want to be rich

Don’t gamble

If that is your wish

Don’t grumble

 

You may win a hand

Once in a while

It is not a rule

But you may try

 

The other day

The other man won a lottery

His life has not turned to gold

What he got is in two-fold

A life of regrets

That bears nothing

A life of folly

That is worth noting

 

“Let’s be honest.

“We all want to be well off, wealthy, rich, abundant”.

That is the Rules of Wealth by Richard Templar

Friend, gambling won’t give you surplus

If you are lucky all you would get is “sore puss”

 

Not another angry black woman

If I March for justice

That makes me nothing less than human

If I demand the police beheld accountable

I am nothing more than human

If I bang on doors and ask all my neighbors to sign the petition

I am nothing less than human

And if a man calls out for his mom as the air is squeezed forever from his lungs and the life goes out from his eyes

I am nothing more than a roaring mama bear

You’d expect no less action or behaviour on my part if it were your child left in my care.

I wasn’t there, but my heart ached just the same

And I knew exactly on whom to place blame.

But you took one look at me

And with not much more than a passing oncepver type of glance

You labeled me just another angry black woman

And shoved me out the back door.

But let me assure you, I am nothing more

Than human

And us humans will one day even up the score.